


Don't Lie To Yourself

by RAW_SYNTH3TICA



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Attempted Seduction, Bisexual Male Character, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Body Worship, Breathplay, Brother/Sister Incest, Childhood Memories, Cock Slut, Cock Tease, Coercion, Dark, Demonic Possession, Emotional Baggage, Enemies, Fake Science, Ficlet, First Time Bottoming, Flirting, Gore, Hate Speech, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Ideally Sensitive Material, Implied Sexual Content, Interracial Relationship, Jealousy, Love/Hate, M/M, Magic, Magic and Science, Magic-Users, Male Homosexuality, Male Slash, Male Solo, Mental Coercion, Mindfuck, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Origins, POV First Person, Pansexual Character, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Prostitution, Rape/Non-con Elements, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Sexual Coercion, Stalking, Topping from the Bottom, Unrequited Lust, Voice Kink, Vore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:18:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RAW_SYNTH3TICA/pseuds/RAW_SYNTH3TICA
Summary: Walter Padick/Scorcerer's POVWhile Roland sleeps, Walter shows up & does some persuading.*based on 2017 film*





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ALL IS FICTIONAL & NOT MINE  
> written in 15 mins to celebrate my new internet connection & contract with a new provider  
> have the book, never read it...because...spoilers :P

_Roland, Roland, Roland?_

“You're not real!”

_How many times did we play this game?_   
_How many more will you lose before you become mine?_   
_You haven't' another father, mother or friend to spare, don't you?_

_Your heart beats fast. Like you're running and can't stop. Is it because you're in a nightmare or because I’m here...sweet talking you like the wife you never had...like the pretty lady friend you chose to ignore until it was too late to save her from me?_

_Roland, Roland, Roland?_   
_Why keep torturing yourself?_   
_Why keep piling up the bodies when it's so easy to just give in?_

_You're so close that I can smell you, taste the gunpowder and salt in the air you breathe, see the small crinkle in your eyelashes as you fight my voice, reject my touch, resist my tempting tampering...._

“Become mine,” I whisper, and your cheek rests within my hands, and jerks away, “Just be mine and all the pain will go away...”

 “Give in and love me,” I say softly, my breath cooling the nightmare's sweat at your upper lip, “I promise, Roland, there'll be no more suffering...”

“No more chains...” I gather up the saliva on your open lips, and bring your moisture to my tongue – I continue softly all the while hovering over your prone body, “No more hopes...”

“No more dreams...” I have grand promises, a great many dreams for when I welcome you to my arms, unto my bed, into my body, “There'll be just you and me...”

“Forever...” I can't resist you, your heat draws me toward you and I don't care to fight it, “In the shadow of the Tower...”

“What do you say, old friend?” your dark eyes open and I say, “Give us what we both want...”

Like lit coal, your voice lights me up, you answer flatly, “You're not my friend, sorcerer.”

“Just a wet dream telling you what you wanna hear?” I ask, I don't feel the bullet as it passes through my head, my chest, and my heart, “-Or what you already know?”


	2. My Lonesome Enemy of Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roland Deschain/Gunslinger POV 
> 
> Roland's day is interrupted by a nuisance that just won't go away...not without trying to seduce him first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy, layaandchloe

Years, miles, my journey beginning from pain and enduring through long spells of rage – my stomach is empty but fed on your imaginary blood, my fingers twitch and grinds against the bones of my palms at the thought of squeezing the trigger, my Ka burns and thrives of the thoughts of killing you.

“You're tired, Roland,” your form walks alongside me as I haul my bullet canister higher.

“I'm pissed off,” I breathe out a puff of air.

“In that case-” you appear before me, the illusion of your body is made clear as you part the black shirt at the seams – I know seduction, the way you trail your hands down your chest and over the buckle of your belt, “-lay down and touch me.”

“Offer me your neck and I'll reconsider,” I’m immune, you can't have me, you can't take me for the weak bastard you want me to be.

“Short term and near-sighted goals,” you whisper against my forehead, I chew on my inner cheek and gums until I bleed to wash the smell of your smoky ozone scent from my head, “Why not my body and my heart while we're bargaining, Roland?”

“Aren't you curious, gunslinger?” you ask, blowing a cooling breeze atop the lapel of my duster, I hike up my canister over my shoulder and ignore your leering gaze.   
“Of what? How your voice sounds when I strangle you?” I can think only of my strong fingers closing over your windpipe, stilling your breaths, hearing the sound of my enemy choking and desperate for air – I say honestly, “About that, I’m much curious.”

The only enticements you rouse in me is my murderous anger – the only excitement you'll ever get from me is the thought of your death – the only touch I will give you is the cold metal of my bullet speeding through your head – you're too forgiving of my hate for you, Walter...

“How my skin tastes, how my body can part to welcome you within-” your fingers travel along the center column of your sternum, showing off all the masculine wiles a man should not know to tempt another – brushing a hand over your own bulge, you groan, “-How my voice hitches when we take part in pleasures forbidden to Arthur's Knights?”

It's true, Arthur's Knights were allowed to take lovers, but were prohibited from forging ties of comforts within each other, which would eventually lead to private altercations, something I was grateful for never being a part of.

Onward, forward, up and up a rocky mountainside your image follows me, taunting me, showing me only one of the practiced acts – one hand on your hard dick, you breathe thickly into the back of my neck as I scale the rocky cliff, “I want you, Roland.”

I can hear you, the sticky motion of your hands in the middle of intimate actions – I nearly lose my footing before I push the image of you to the back of my mind, I say, “You'll have to earn my death the hard way, Walter.”

“In a million-and-one more ways than dead,” your breath is a shudder, quiet and deep like distant rolling thunder – the cool breeze of your breath is in my ear, “Any way you want as long as I'm held.”

“Death's embrace welcomes all,” I answer – you scoff, but you keep on doing your business anyway, squeezing yourself and making wet squelching noises, I almost want to look.

“My Ka hungers for yours, gunslinger, with a lust like no other,” you chuckle throughout my ordeal ascending the cliffside, I balance my weight close to the cliff all the while resisting the urge to glance back, you don't deserve the satisfaction of my eyes on you – the sounds you make at my back loses rhythm and becomes uneven, “Like how much this wasteland thirsts for life – or how much you'd wish to see my head behind the barrel of your gun...my Ka aches for you.”

“I'd rather see you destroyed than alive for a thousand Worlds, sorcerer,” I say – a small crag opens up into a cavern, I strike the damp cave's walls and concentrate on the echoes which reverberate forward and upward, giving the impression of an elevated opening, onward I go.

“You got no choice, gunslinger,” my title slithers from your tongue like aged brandy, but all you can do is talk at my side without actually effecting me – your body stretches out fifteen paces ahead of me and all I can do is go forward, “I'm the closest thing you have to life outside of your pitiful vengeance.”

“A choice. The truth is, sorcerer-” I stride up to the image of your body, my eyes never stray, all the fermented bile that has been my life comes up in a simple explanation, “-I'd march a thousand Worlds, Earth key and back, a million half-dead days and sleepless nights to find you...”

Slowly, noisily, you work your dick until I peek a milisecond glance – that one glance paints a grin that would make Lady Luck pout from envy.

“So that I can watch you bleed around my bullet,” I say, passing striagith through your body and unto the faint trail upward, the day's sweat trickles down my neck at the same moment you appear at my side, licking your lips and hitching your hips forward unto me, “Beg for your life as I bide my time a hundred years before.”

“You promise, gunslinger?” your smile becomes wider as your eyes narrow at my lips.

“That, sorcerer, I swear,” I answer, never breaking my even strides as the end of the cave approaches.

“Don't make me wait too long, Roland, or I may just take what I want without saying please,” you remain in the shadow, rasping and panting, your hands dripping thick white essence unto the ground – I leave you standing and memorize the sound of your tongue lapping at your sticky fingers.


	3. The Age Old Adage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter Padick/Sorcerer's POV

You would feel so at home inside me, Roland.

Being alive for a thousand and so years has made my body tough, but not at all displeasing. I think I can please you very, very much. A Hell lot better than your right hand, more so than any virgin you've ever bedded.

My body is an electrical conductor encased in muscle and flexible tendon – so perfect and just ripe.

You would enjoy the magics, it's power washing over us both as we embrace and lose ourselves in a lifetime of sin.

Not too soft, not too stringy, not too excessively wrought with rigor mortis brought on by advanced age – alive enough to squirm, pliant enough to yield.

A thousand years young, and I still got it:

Perfect columns of hard muscle interwoven over the length of my bones.

Supple tendon connecting my bones and ready to tear if you want it to, contort me anyhow which makes you cum.

My skin is bronze and dusted with fine golden hairs, so that I can feel every movement you make.

God broke the mold after the seventh day with me, Gunslinger...Oh, yes, He did.

I'm not ashamed, it only means that there's one of Me in these thousands of Worlds. Only one of Me in the entire interconnected universes and so on and so forth. Never to be imitated nor replicated ever again.

“So what're you waiting for, Roland?” I ask your foggy representation, my legs splayed haphazardly over a chair's cushioned seat as I am seated back deeply – my teeth bites my lower lip as I pant arily and never break your steely eyecontact, “Come find me.”

Oh my, aren't you just the abstract murderous gentleman today? Am I finally getting through to you? Can you no longer resist my well-mannered charm?

“Isn't this the _'cage'_ you fought wars for?” I lift my right leg until I can reach my right hand beneath my balls and touch my tailbone – your face hardens, never even in the slightest interested that my fingers are brushing against my moist _'keyhole'_ to your _'cage'_ , my lips stretch against my teeth when I spy a sweat drop with my pretty blue eyes, “Am I _worth_ the sacrifices on your behalf?”

What are you so afraid of, Roland? My classical allure? My rapist wit? Or is it...?

Or is it...?

“Tearing you apart with my bullets maybe...” I groan at the sound of your smoky voice – my eyes roll to the back of my head and my head lolls against my shoulders, “Your eyes full of fear and hopelessness means everything, Sorcerer.”

Oh, you torment me, Roland of the house Deschain.

The animalistic look in your eyes and I almost melt in my seat, not once touching my pulsing dick, just anticipating you tearing my clothes off and tearing into me – I chuckle at the sight of your back presented to my seeking magics, “That's the spirit, Gunslinger.”

You don't fear me at all...you're completely obsessed.

Any kind of attention I can have from you, I'll take it.

 _We'll see, Gunslinger, if you'll sing in the cage I made for you_ \- I press only my fingertip in and my ass swallows greedily - _I know I will._


	4. Maybe, Maybe Once...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roland Deschain/Gunslinger's POV
> 
> Roland remembers the first time he saw the Man in Black

...when Father Time was still a young man. His spine was straight and untouched from life's many supine dastarditites, his eyes fresh and unrelenting as he walked a straight line from dusk and throughout the quiet of dawn, before a milky film blinded him, causing him to take on the waggly gait of a crippled drunk – thusly, Time became a joke.

Not quite being measured and exact, not really adhering to his own rules, not truly caring or aware of his omnipresent existence.

My mamma's face, she was prettier than any Knight's wife – caring and doting, she was a force to be reckoned with, she walked with a heavy iron shotgun and a bowie knife, the only one for my pa, and the last woman to ever leave a kiss on my head...

The devilgrass is dying, I stoke up the greasy flames and lean up against the gnarled gristle that was a mighty tree in its own youth.

Seeing you for the first time was like being graced by an angel's presence – God, you were magnificent.

I never expected to be bothered at my mother's funeral after laying down a sad withered lilac on her casket – all the remaining Knights and their wives and their squalling families left her burial site, the last of their respects leaving evidence in the form of my trampled tears...you appeared.

“How's it hanging?” you asked, I scraped my tears with the back side of my sleeve, “Why do you cry, boy?”

I looked up, your face was slightly shadowed by the black hood and your tall body covered in a black cassock. Some might've called you a priest, some might've made you for a handsome stranger – I saw an angel come to comfort me in my darkest hour.

Almost definitely, I was still just a boy freshly weaned from his mother and learning his first lessons as a future Gunslinger, but I asked in the dullest tone I could muster, “Are you a priest, mister?”

You smiled, handsome, the shadows vacating your face as if suddenly illuminated by an inner holiness, your blue eyes flashed and you leaned toward my level, the grating sweetness of your voice hardly masked you interest, “If I were?”

In all my years running about the school marms, the most called-upon teenage daughters of the Gunslingers, you were by far the most beautiful, as tempting as a honeycomb doused in poison and cyanide – my mousy voice eked to life and your smile widened, “Never seen no priest as...as...”

“Go on,” you goaded the way a parent goads their children to make right choices – you wanted me to admit my very first infantile sin: Envy.

“ _Pretty_ ,” I sputtered quietly – my envy was for all those whom you graced with your kind smile, your wickedness which I took for benevolence, the act of understanding my envy was an emotion I had not yet put a name to.

“I ain't no priest,” you said after a long spell of heart-rending silence – my body knocked the bole of a tall tree before I realize that you cornered me by presence alone, my innocent eyes took in each motion as you bend in half to my height, you said then, “But I do like hearing of sin. Got any sins to confess to me?”

My fear of you is absent then as it is now. I only looked up at you as if you were the tallest elm spewing wise odds and ends of a campfire tale – of my own choice, I told of the only truth my life has been.

“Ma and Pa raised me right, mister,” my eyes don't deceive me when I saw the blue swallowed up in the black, just momentarily, “Can't tell you if I lied.”

“Lie,” you said, the utterance of your word is flat and lacking even a tone of involvement.

“No,” I told you – I never did like being told what to do, your eyes flash the brightest blue and your warm smile returns.

“You won't tell me a lie, but will you tell a lie for me?” you knelt to my height, your hot hands taking my own in your gentle iron grip, I feel ashamed once your voice dips low as if disappointed in me, “Aren't we friends?”

My words flee at the sight of your lowered eyebrows, and I nod to bring back your smile.

“Tell your Pa that I’m waiting at the pet cemetery on the grave marked 'Cujo',” like the sun breaking over a stream, your smile makes me dizzy and giddy all at the same time – I miss your touch as you quickly vacate me, you look over your shoulder at me and grin, “Do this for me and we'll be friends to the end.”

Long after your leave me with a sorrowful whistled tune, I stood quietly where we once shared a space, wringing my hands over and over to replicate your heat – I scampered back after the supper bell was rung, Pa took notice of my cheery grin, mustering a sad half-moon motion with his lips in greeting.

We took our meal in silence, both of us acknowledging mama's passing – until Pa asked me of my day after the funeral, I was all to happy to spin the tale of my exploits, I took little notice of Pa's shriveling grin, the jovial line of his lips mimicking a starved root by the end of my tale.

He said solemnly, “You met Walter.”

The emptiness of his voice stole away what little happiness I gained from meeting you that day, I resented Pa for spoiling it, but I wouldn't tell him – he stared at the empty bean pot and abruptly stood, “The Man in Black comes.”

Pa left within the hour, his force strong by ten-dozen Knights. Half went mad during the march, only Pa and ten of his force remained that morning, I stood at the cabin's doorway waiting Pa's return – the men moaned their discontent rather than their wounds, it was then I realized that I was the gambit and had outlaid a devastating blow to our fight for the Tower.

Pa held me in his arms that night as I cried like a baby, two words leaving my lips in a never-ending squall of, “I'm sorry.”

All he did was kiss me and rock me, not once lying that I shouldn't be apologizing.

“Whatever did happen to that sweet boy, Gunslinger?” I look up from the dusty ground and see your black boots.

“He got filled with regret,” my throat moves around the thick words and you hear them with palpable triumph.

“Mm,” you mumble thoughtfully to yourself, you bend down to my ear and whisper, “I think you fell in love.”

“Fixation,” I jerk my head away, the lump in my throat disappears and is replaced by acid, “Of the vilest kind.”

“Come to me, Roland,” your voice follows me, I stand and kick out the greasy embers until there is only a sour smoke left between us, “Only _I_ can forgive you and absolve you of your regret.”

“I remember my father's face,” I answer, hauling up my bullet canister over my shoulder and shoving my opposite arm through the duster's leather sleeve – I check my gunbelt and growl, “I won't disappoint him again!”

You're behind me, ghostly fingertips brushing my neck and your lips breathing into my ear – I shut you away and continue onward into the endless wasteland leading to the other empty expanse you occupy, I say, “No more.”

_Keep telling yourself that, Roland._

They are extinct and have been for hundreds of years, but I _swear_  you smell of fresh lilacs.


	5. The Devil's Cherry Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walter Padick/Sorcerer's POV

Sex. Sin. Debauchery.  
Sacrilege. Fear. Power.

Those are some of my favorite things, Roland.  
Like the birth of a baby, the death of a King's firstborn son – our Ka is intertwined and tangled. The knot never to be undone and cemented within the sands that Father Time trampled.

We're one like it or not.

My ancient eyes watched you grow – and my, oh, my! What a fine man you've become.  
Once small and spriggy as a stubborn weed, you filled out with hard bone and mountains of muscle.

As a child, I was only attracted to your sorrow, amused by your genial honesty and I stayed only to sow a seed of sin.  
And you did, you took Eve's rotten apple straight from the Devil's grasp – cherry wine tastes best in the devil's hand, doesn't it?

But twisting a child's innocence is so much sweeter.

So deliciously profane...twisting a young Knight's Ka into a beautifully bleak void overfilled with bone rot.  
My teeth aches and my tongue curls at the simple thought – I almost regret not stealing you away to savor your Ka as it caresses my lips, slips down my throat and is dissolved within the empty pit that is my stomach.

Would I have defiled you as a man does to a painted lady of the night?

In some ways, yes – I would have filled your pure mind with lurid tales and absolute filth, told you in great detail of the Second City Gomorrah where I was the bastard conceived by two siblings – the original city where prostitutes were born, bred, taught and maimed.

That is a tale for another time, Roland.

Every word detailing my birth and my childhood spun in an evening designed to make you squirm within your skin, and ultimately damn your wholesome upbringing.

But, I wanted you pure, to keep you as untainted as godly possible.

And yet, could I save you from your own lust?   
Ignore you as your mind shouted images of my smile?   
  
I sat outside upon windowsills, at the fire outside of your tent, upon the opposite side of a tree as you took favors from admirers.  
Always, they were women, and always, you never took notice of some of your fellow Knights' roving eyes.

And in the mornings after you'd split a woman's hips open with your magnanimous 'pistol', I’d leave you a present:

The body of a male admirer, missing his cock – _I always did love to bite during sex_ – bloodless and blind – ' _breakfast in bed'_ – and their Ka torn straight from their ribcage – the best part of sex was the prize _inside_.

You'd overreact, yell and curse my name a blue streak before lunch.

Oh, you make me blush sometimes, Roland.

Truly, whence our eyes first met, our Ka touched, intertwined, tangled, twisted and knotted.

My destroyer, I had alas found you – your torturer, you had found me – and yet you bound me to your shineless will, and I enslaved you to think only of me, to harbor emotions only for me...

“...love is quite the same as hate, Roland,” my eyes catch the bright point of red as you light the crude cigarette you roll, “It's just a matter of context.”

Your silence is welcomed, I listen to the dusty quiet steadily interrupted by your breathing and exhalation of smoke.

“I had the choice to deface your body once, Roland,” your breath stills, the point of light moves and indicates your full attention as you look to my image – I never quite had the penchant for ruining children being that a prostitute's education began as soon as body growth stopped, it was a task given to the lowest and most unholy warlocks gifted with the shine – but I was Gomorrah's exiled Prince, and so I asked lazily, “Don't you ever wonder why I didn't?”

The silence stretches to the point I think you may be ignoring me, and you exhale heartily the bitter smoke – I breathe you in, tasting the inside of your body where the smoke touched and lapping up the vapor of your dried saliva:

“No,” you shift slightly within the moonless night air, you continue onward – wandering blindly along the trail I had left behind hours before, you mumble around the cigarette, “T's the past.”

Is it?

I relive the event over and over.

“Sometimes I think on it,” I say, walking alongside you and leave no imprint where your own boots scuff the sand – your eyes were wide, pleading and apologizing at the same time for a scolding I didn't give, the image of your childish self is imprinted in my memory so deeply that I can conjure you up from smoke simply to stare at your image – I shrug whilst answering your muteness, “Then I realize it's because you weren't afraid of me.”

An indigo moon rises from the north, we ignore Father Time's funny way of turning clocks and calendars sideways from inside out, dust blows weakly at our boots, sand crackling on the worn leather of your boots and passing unhindered through mine – I say then hours later and days before dawn, “And I respect that.”

“What you think doesn't matter to me, Sorcerer,” you say automatically – the moon's weak illumination places me in your shadow, all I see is the soft glow from your squinting eyes.

_There you are, little Gunslinger boy, I see you._

“I've known you too long to swallow a lie now,” I chuckle, the light is gone from your eyes in an instant, like a snuffed church candle.

“If it ain't true now, it'll be true tomorrow,” you say, your strides a little longer, your boots hitting the dry ground a little harder, you grit your teeth through a dustdevil's assault.

The moon is at a deadlock, still deciding whether it should backtrack or continue forward, we move sullenly in the extended night – you say then, the signature bitterness in your voice, “You should've killed me when you had the chance.”

I couldn't – didn't want to.

“So you can suffer eternal nothingness without my touch, Roland?” I purr, we match strides and we match speeds perfectly – of the millions of bodies of the endless shapes and sizes and tastes, I speak truly the root cause of my dilemma, “I'd suffer eternal celibacy for your touch.”

“Save your promises-” I watch your lips move – you are a nailed coffin: rotting on the inside and splintered on the outside, not at all yielding to the pressures of the grave atop you, too stubborn to disintegrate into nothingness, “-Spend your sins.”

Celibacy makes my skin blister, my balls heavy and my cock sensitive, but I can hold out, I will hold out, as I had promised earlier, I sneer coyly, “When the ascendant of my promises is so near makes me want to sin all the more.”

I leave you and return to my own campfire a day's ride away – my toy is waiting, the blood flowing from his split ass still hasn't stopped, the smell curls sharply within my chest and I suddenly can't stand him whimpering at my boots, his stretched lips sniveling out a puddle of my white essence...should I fuck him?

My body won't obey – I rub my soft cock against his trembling lips and...Nothing!

“Guess you're off the hook, slick,” I admit and...oooh....there is a jagged rock next to his head, I stand and tuck myself away, soft cock and all, I command gently, “Go fuck yourself.”

Blubbering, snorting and bawling, he does just that as I walk away – his screams follow me over the dunes and halt two hours later.

_Can't wait for you to find him, Roland, you're getting close._


	6. A Gunslinger's Lament

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roland Deschain/Gunslinger's POV

The sun is merciless. The day itself is merciless. The sun still hasn't decided whether to creep back to the south or set in the northern part of the baked desert.

The dust chokes me despite the thick wool and cotton breather I have over my face. Leaving testament of its own remorseless nature, testing my mettle as I brave the sting of sand pelting my bare skin and the naked corners of my eyes, all I see is a fading trail that you left...smell the burned ozone scent you always leave behind...feel the magnetic waves your magics has kept the surround air charged with.

Since the ripe fighting age of ten, I’ve been walking after you:

Each step, each puff of air, every drop of water has been so that I can catch you in my sites, within the range of my two pistols...it's never enough, I can't really catch up to you no matter how many days I've traveled sleepless, starved, parched...sexless.

If I were a mortal man on your tail picking a fight for the sake of bragging, I’d be dead, buried in the sand, forgotten, the epitaph of my life summed up in – “Here lies nest-fly, surely a man whom never wasted breath nor drink chasing life's few temptations.”

Many women came calling, wanting to pocket my pistol and feel it fire off into their untasted chambers of flesh – I obliged, at first out of curiosity – after acquiring a taste for virgin cunny, it became the need to stave off my addiction to the bloodjuices their quims held...

One can call a Gunslinger as myself a terribly odd man fighting for my lady's love, my clan's honor and a God's will that silently shuts itself up in a book – mother and father instilled the fear of God in me as a boy, but now, I’ve lost the will to believe faithfully in something none has ever seen...

Yet, Arthur of the lost city was descended from the Archangel Michael...so the legend goes...so the scripts of Ascension says – who am I to believe if my guns were blessed by a man sired by His holy angel?

“There is no hell,” a drunk dweller hisses at me in passing, I take little notice as his tongue snakes out like a drowning worm and he pricks his tongue on my steel spur, blood dripping from his mouth, he giggles lazily, “We are in hell. This is hell. Hell is here. Here is hell...”

“That so?” the words leave me before I have a chance to wonder if my interest is really invested.

Slowly, his old disheveled head pokes up from the floor, his eyes like two sunny-side-up eggs sliding across a dirty gray plate, his thin lips gave way to a pair of rotten gums and a handful of chipped glass shards poking up where his missing teeth once sat – I stood patiently, my tongue licking at my own teeth the longer I stared into his gaping mouth.

“No one ever tell you o' man's first sin, stranger?” he asked, his dusty eyes staring at me from the floor – I waited, “Ambition.”

Is he the Man in Black? Is he a stranger with the shine? The Man in Black occasionally walks into bodies not his own and enacts his own will, but why possess a drunk?

If anything, the Man in Black has a reputation for only having the best.

The old drunk sucked his lips into his mouth, his wormy tongue sticking through the wide pucker of his lips as he smiled stupidly, “It crawls in through your ear not while you'se knows, grows and grows like a sandstorm until....until...”

I wonder, not too hard, not too deeply of the old dweller's words, and just before I can complete a thought, he giggles to himself as if he were telling a secret, “...the Devil robs you. Takes everything worth taking. He don't go after your wife, your children. No, he way smarter than that, feller...”

All the while, his eyes never leave me, he displays the deep punctures on his tongue, his clotted blood oozes out thickly between words and is thickened by the syllables, and yet his voice is clear and smooth, “I'll rot your Ka, twist your dead body until you can't say no.”

From behind the dweller's head you appear, your flawless face as distinguished as always, your dark hair slicked back severely from your smooth brow and your black cassock the same shade of oblivion and nothing as always before, you nuzzle the dweller's brow whilst you stood slowly, your long legs stretching out beneath you as the helpless dweller sat beneath your stance.

“Stop hiding from me, Sorcerer, and maybe I'll be kind,” I say, now resorting to words instead of wasting bullets on the mirages of you.

“What's the fun in that, Roland?” you ask, keeping a hand on the dweller's head and petting him like a loyal mule – I keep my eyes on you though your handsome image scalds my bones into cemented ash, your lips stretch into a smile, “You play 'hard to get', I'll play 'hard to catch'. It's only fair.”

“You'll just as soon lose my interest,” my lips tighten around the words even though I only wish they were possible and not a theory.

“Eons on my tail is true commitment, Gunslinger,” you stride to my side, pushing the dweller's head back until you can seat yourself atop his collarbone – you sneer sweetly, “Put down your guns and I'll show you only what I can give you. Free of charge.”

For a single millisecond, I am torn.

“I'm picky,” I say.

“I'm choosy,” you answer.

“I doubt it,” I say.

“As do I,” you cock your head to the side, your arms brace backwards leisurely atop the dweller's shoulders, you put up a single perfect digit, “One hour.”

I recoil visibly, my words are thick and venomous, “What makes you think I'll accept?”   
  
Your interest is barely contained, your whisper is low and challenging, “What makes you think you won't?”

I've never lied, and I won't allow a false word leave me now – once in a blue moon, I spend and infinitesimal amount of time wondering how your regard for me has stirred my curiosity...after thinking of all the Gunslingers you've drained of their Ka, I’m grateful for avoiding your poisonous charms.   
  
“Choices, choices, choices,” your voice breaks through my thoughts and I am brought back to the present, you ask in the same sultry tone, “Pleasure or loneliness, Roland?”

“Pain and torture,” I answer, my rigid body leaning down unto you, “I'll be dealing both.”

“I like the way you lie,” you lean upward and meet me hardly a breath's width from my own lips – you chuckle lowly, “You make me almost want to believe.”

“Lies never make it past my conscious,” I answer, faltering your smile in the slightest.

“You once told the truth for me knowing it was a lie,” you say, and I recall the day too vividly whence I was a boy and you were an angelic being in black – I don't answer as quickly as you ask, “What made you do that, Roland?”

I won't lie or try to justify my childhood stupidity and make a mockery of eleven-dozen dead Knights – I only taste my shame as it washes over me in vile waves, your smooth hand comes up to my face – I don't move away as you whisper almost caringly, “I'm still waiting for you...”

You are old enough to be my many-times greatgrandfather, and yet, you know my inner turmoils even better then my own blood father ever did, even better than I do.

There is a treacherous softness, a taboo kind of tenderness in your eyes...if only your Ka was intended to love once, maybe then, I’d have allowed myself to fall into your arms-

'I don't shoot with my gun, I shoot with my eyes!' my mother's voice screams inside my head, my arm whips to my gunholster, I take hold of my pistol and aim for your head, you kiss the metallic tip, your lips passing through the barrel as I squeeze the trigger.

“Run, Gunslinger, run – you can't get away from me fast enough,” your whisper is louder in my ear than the thunder crack of iron striking the bullet's gunpowder, the dweller's eyes roll to the back of his head as a stream of blood trickles from his caved forehead – his mouth moves and your voice emits, “You can't catch me quick enough.”

“I don't aim with my arm, I aim with my mind,” the words flow through me effortlessly, more so than pointing and shooting at your retreating form as you become a part of the burning horizon – I pocket my pistol and say under my breath, “I don't kill with my bullet, I kill with my heart.”

Destined to kill you, are you really willing to love me, Walter?


	7. Oh, Lay Me Down Heavy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Walter Padick/Sorcerer's POV

_'Every child is born perfect and without sin...'_

How very wrong you are, preacher.

_'Only in life, can the child bear witness and enact sin...'_

My mother, rest her weary cunny, was the busiest whore in all the land – she maybe was pretty, maybe uglier than the hind-end of a freshly-fucked asshole, but after her little brother became old enough to hold his dick vertical without taking so much as a pissing fuck...well, whence the old bastard named Stoney Bones of the clan Beauleauxe thence became my father as well.

The bitch died before I even learned how to breathe, and so my warty-prick father took her still-pregnant corpse to the wizard Tholemer, whom worked his magics on us both.

My mother woke from her rotting state only to curse old Stoney Bones, to tell him that he should've kicked her square in the uterus instead of allowing me to grow and that I felt like a porcupine splitting out her cunny hole – I remember because she just as quickly abandoned me on the birthing table and gave me over to the wizard Tholemer.

They never once visited as I grew into my own, Tholemer did the best he could manage raising me into his profession: a Virgin-Breaker.

It's a thankless job, spending all my days from the prime working-age of eight to begin magically removing hymens, tearing the cockligaments and draining virginbloods away into perfume bottles.

Tholemer was the one who 'trained' these poor souls to take unto themselves the flesh of their master Patrons, to give unto themselves the womanly slits of their mistress Patrons, and to enact the depraved will of the mob which bought their life for the day – again, affairs for the mortals and their crude purses full of gold coins.

Whether the prostitute lived or died was the will of their Patrons, whether they were allowed back to their cage or bought for the remainder of their days was the will left solely to their current Patrons – I stood offside, drinking in all manners of perverse deeds done for pleasure, tasting each scream as an unfortunate's Ka was ripped from their bodies...

Being born into such a place so many hated was an irreversible affliction of the mind...this, the Second City Gomorrah and all it's poisonous atrocities, was my first love, my first lover, my first indelible desire.

All of Gomorrah withered with age, died of plague or mortal causes, only I was still a child for nearly eight centuries before Tholemer decided to teach me the ways of a Virgin-Breaker...what underwhelming fun that turned out to be.

Compared to the endless droves of mortal prostitutes, I was an ancient Ka in a beautiful vessel entombed for ever more in a comely effigy of muscle and bone...my handsomeness triumphed their fears, allowing me to be a welcomed guest into their bodies...and so it was said, that the bastard Walter of the clan Beauleauxe was the prince of Second City Gomorrah.

And why was I bestowed such a title?

The Second City Gomorrah never had a leader, not so much as a peacekeeper nor a person of any lower offices – the city itself was self-sufficient in its own dealings being the supplier of perverse public attractions, a breeding ground for disease and pestilence, the purveyor of various drugs and alternative tinctures.

Any such lawless sprawling metropolis' wrote their own rules and broke all pertaining to those written by God himself.

Mother Jezebel and my father Stoney would reveal to me then of their own great grandsire: the Fallen One, the Father of Sin and Lies.

Lucifer, the Star of the Morning, the Fallen Angel.

The unholy blood running through my veins explained my immortality as much as my immorality, my inability to suffer as mortally possible, my ability to retain and learn the anti-magics.

Indeed, God broke the mold after learning His grievous mistake by making my body a device of lust and infamy, my very existence inspiring even the most pious of mortals to bow at my feet and offer their flesh as penitence – I have tasted every shape, form, age and creed, dead and undead.

To my own disappointment, I grew tired of worship, the endless parade of squirming bodies laying themselves at my feet, and so I conjured a plague – the plague itself was quite a beautiful sickness in the form of a drug, the wealthy and the destitute fell prey as their Ka was wrenched from their bodies, their mortal bodies disintegrated into nothingness – the plague reached even the most far-flung metropolis such as the one named Camelot the Shining Holy Municipal to the northeast.

My beautiful metropolis Gomorrah became but a mountain of rotting flesh composed of hundreds of billions of decomposing bodies – oh, how the city stank of sin as I watched the skyscrapers crumble, my effigies and alters rising above even the tallest buildings of worship.

Centuries thence, I stayed within the tallest tower of white marble as the Second City Gomorrah fell to dust – I partook of the flesh of innocents as they wandered through my ruinous metropolis, my magics grew all the more from each Ka I’ve taken and offered to the realm of my blood-sire.

The Dark Tower sat undisturbed as I began my journey to discovering other means of attaining power, except, King Arthur's Knights intercepted me being that they were the descendents of peacekeepers and judges of their own city of Camelot – we fought many wars, the Knights and my undead legions, our battles always at a stalemate, one never besting the other...and I met you.

I remember the day as if it weren't an hour ago:

The world had eroded itself dry and barren, except the sprawl of accidental vegetation at the edge of the Tower's borders where Arthur had settled his Gunslingers to train and live the miniscule pinpoint that became of their lives – the sun was high and the sky cloudless as a procession marched behind a wooden casket, you walked beside your father as he carried the head of the casket, your small hand hanging unto his suspender strap and your other hand clutching a sprig of dead lilac.

I could smell your mother's milk lingering upon your cheeks, the dirt from fields upon your hand and your fingers smelling of lilac and rye bread – I could taste your innocence, it was so sweet and pure that the bitterness from your sorrow was a dull reminder of your mortal lineage as a Gunslinger.

A little lamb comes to the alter as bidden for his own slaughter, you welcomed me unto your company as a friend.

You were the cleanest, most unadulterated mortal Ka I had ever come across and my magics ached to attain you, to twist your mind and pollute your Ka until you surpassed even myself in wickedness.

So eager you were to please me, and you spoke with such honest that...that...I no longer wanted to drain you of your Ka.

And you grew to hate me and love me with your bullets and pistols with such a passion, I may never need anything else again for as long as I walk in the Tower's shadow...

“-you see, monk?” I rape his ass furiously, all the previous struggle he had since then became mewls and excited gasps, I kick his legs further apart and lean heavily atop his hips, I grab hold of his robes and hiss into his ear, “There is no such thing as 'born without sin' for _I am living proof_ of such lies!”

“Oh, my savior!” he gasps, his sphincter squeezes down and clamps me within, almost like a sloppy used cunt, I slap his jiggling ass and throw my weight into his hips, “Please! Please! Please-!”

“Give yourself unto me, little lamb!” I can't keep back the language of my ancestors, without thinking to do so, I command of the monk, “Hold out your neck so that I may drain your blood!”

Instantly, the monk pops head own head as if he were a fly, his head falls off his body as if the very fibers holding his head to his shoulders had vacated his spine, and his body shudders aside until my cock slides out of his body – looking from the disconnected head to the body, I say, “Ah, shit.”

I had been riding his ass long and hard for hours, and yet, my balls refused to give up the pent seed still swirling within my body.

With a defeated sigh, I vacate the tiny cottage that was offered to me by the accompanying abbey – none of them even came to investigate the cry of their brother hours before whence I had him cornered and began my assault.

Perhaps fear stills their steps, maybe it was lust that had made them fear my presence alone.

The night has alas uncloaked the day and I begin my journey before you alas put up an even mightier struggle than the dead monk ever did...I want to break your resolve and make you fall into my bed, welcome you into my inner cavern of flesh...

You'll never win.

You'll never catch me.

You'll never capture me.

I'll tantalize and madden your flesh, your mind until you grow heartsick with lovelessness...

_That, Roland, is a promise._


	8. Eternity is Very Much Ephemeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roland Deschain/Gunslinger's POV

When the world was young, I wasn't even a yet a stitch in the tapestry of the Tower's fated story, my birth was an accident.

A night of too little outside exploration and too much curiosity – their eyes met, and almost as quickly, they bound their fates together.

The world in the time of the great reaping after King Uther's death, all of Camelot fell into chaos and restlessness brought on by a mysterious crystal – the people consumed these crystals and their bodies began to rot, from the inside out, the young and the old, the stupid and the wise, the crystal knew no social divisions, all it did was eat away at brains and left a husk of the former person.

All they knew was hunger, all they understood was the primal urge to feed and breed – such was the world then as it was known...

I asked my father if he lived during that time, he told me that his many-times great-grandfather Percy II of the clan Deschain first saw the Man in Black – my shoulders stiffened and my tongue curled against the back of my throat at the mentioning of the Man in Black, father saw and he refreshed my cup of dark coffee.

We drank in silence, myself kept in the reminder of my shame and my father in keeping his tears back at the thought of mother.

The night spread itself high above our heads, the stars burning their cold lonely flame in the sun's bleak absence – father tore out another page of his 'modern' translation of the Scripts of Ascension, God's words whence his only holy Son touched the Tower's ancient soil and sewed seed into the world by taking the form of an Archangel's descendant...

There were great sprawling 'cities' from one edge of this world unto the edge of the other and my own father's descendants clan of Deschain were housed in the very middle – buildings of stone and glass reaching as grandly if not as highly as the Tower's height, means of transportation like no other, their bodies of steel and hearts of fire and iron, people lived their days in leisure...what a nightmare.

How then had the city fallen into ruin for God had given not two, but _three_ _chances_ to overcome the antichrist?

The first being King Uther, whom succumbed to the cannibalistic disease – the second was his wife Queen-regent Gwen, she fell after evacuating the people and settling them unto the plains to the farthest east, she died during childbirth – the last, King Arthur of the last bastion of Camelot's remaining Knights, his story being the most widely-known and equally the most infamous...

“Terribly beautiful man he was,” you are a stillday's ride away and your words whisper across the bare scrubland where dust kicks up at the slightest breath, “He screamed my name first in ecstasy...”

The last incarnation of the Archangel Michael is a story told only to those downtrodden in spirit and low of morale, children are told a slightly different rendition whilst we adult Gunslingers are given the solid truth as bile and baleful the taking of King Arthur's Ka had been: having taken the most important stronghold from the Man in Black, none of the Knights would've ever counted on being ambushed during their own victory feast – King Arthur was taken by those undead serving beneath the Man in Black and returned that morning naked, bloodied, raped, accosted and maimed – the crystal ate away at King Arthur's brain until there remained the urge to feed and breed, none escaped his snapping jaws or his starvation's embrace unfucked. Not in any particular order.

“...and his last hour...” your voice continues onward, seducing, and pleading if my ears resist your seduction, barging if my mind resists your pleading – you paint the image within my mind, behind my eyelids – I see the fabled King Arthur spread beneath you, “...he cried my name, Roland, cried like I was his Holy Archangel Michael...”

His long pale-gold limbs are curled inward and poised like a frog as you fuck him in a downward trajectory, his scraggly blonde hair is matted over his eyes and you bite his ear all the while hissing to him, “...I don't believe in God! I don't believe in sin! You're the Devil!”

“You waste your breath, Sorcerer,” I say, my tongue feels thick and slaps against my teeth as I down two gulps of water – it tastes like dust, “Kicking graves, pestering ghosts and such.”

My bones creak, my joints feel stiff, the blood in my veins sup the water before it can untighten my locked muscles – but I feel you, you're getting nearer, I’m catching up and you're closer today than yesterday – you smell of musty lilacs.

“Doesn't matter none if you _care_ -” you say, your voice is clearer, it might just be my head playing tricks with the wind and my sixth day without water, but the smell of ozone and lilacs is unmistakable, “-Just so that you _hear_ me.”

“When I get you...-” I huff through my steady trek, I don't know whether I’m talking to myself or if it's just the evening's unmoving heat baking through my dried out brain – I don't feel any hate, no kind of ire, just seething frustration along with a festering amount of disenchantment, “When I've got you-”

“You'll kill me? You'll end me?” you sound amused, almost as much as I’d react being that a hoarse voice is on the verge of threatening the heattraps broiling in the sand – you scoff disbelievingly, “You'll destroy me, Roland?”

My hands are always ready to avenge the fallen Knights and to restore King Arthur's honor...but personally, I feel absolutely nothing, like the bare desert between me and you, my soul has been picked clean by all of immortal life's tribulations – I am lesser than the memory of my father and his death at your hand...for that reason only, I'll give you the common courtesy of looking down my pistol's barrel before I send you to your homeworld Hell. Being that you've lived here longer than I’ve been sane, you'll be right at home.

“Hold me, kiss me-” your voice pleads, the same way a whore begs her client for another hour to earn another coin – and yet the way you plead sounds sweeter, “Take your revenge, I don't care, just _fuck_ _me_.”

For a second, just a stolen moment, I envy my dead King's intimacy.

“Your size and enthusiasm is no mystery, hasn't been for over an eon...” my steps stagger but I refuse to fall straight on my ass even while my body is desperately trying to fight the interest my blood takes, where you make logic in undermining my vows as a Gunslinger, I find pity and overwhelming loyalty towards my father – you whisper your smooth seducer’s words, “There's nobody alive to disappoint.”

I would know. I would disappoint myself.

“Your King is dead. His seed never bore fruit. Your judgmental Gunslingers are of the dust playing upon the sand,” you say low – the familiar wet squelch of your hand working your cock sounding in my other ear though you are farther than the sound should carry, “Your God and His almighty Archangels are dead...”

I can look behind where you are absent or I can look on ahead and anticipate your actions, both options are tempting and abhorrent – your voice gathering conviction, you ask, “Who would you disappoint, who would give a damn where you holstered your pistols if not the rotten steer's corpse a half-mile away?”

That does it.

“Eventually, I’d lay you down in a shallow grave with the sand to tide you over,” I walk faster, my boots hitting the ground in a more violent manner than before, I know outrunning your voice is pointless but replacing your voice with the feel of heat seems better, the velocity allows me to take a running start at a canyon wall which winds its way upward – I spit over my shoulder where I assume your voice is, “Maybe in the next month or the next year, I'll shoot you from ass to mouth and rip out your Ka on sheer principal...”

The canyon's smooth golden walls are at least two and three-quarters a mile up and a hundred miles around, I take my chances hoofing the precariously thin ledges which zigzag upward at a slight slant.

“Until that hour, Sorcerer, until I draw my gun square at your temple-” my concentration is half on the task and mostly focused on setting the record straight – I steel my nerves and step over a wide gap in the withered trail, I say, “-I won't be making no grand illusions where I lay my head or put my pistols.”

“So remind me again, Roland, where you get off leaving everyone for dead and refusing my generous offer?” you ask, the wind could be your breath, your breath could be the wind taunting my progress, I continue on without giving too much thought about my childhood shame or missing the chance of sampling the sin even an Archangel fell prey to.

“There's nothing _'generous'_ about sleeping with the enemy,” I say.

“There's nothing _'righteous'_ about _not_ fucking me, Gunslinger,”  you answer just as cussedly, your heat sidles up against my shoulder blades and I unconsciously shiver , “You'll wish I warmed your cot, I dream of it.” 

“I don't envy your illusions of me, Sorcerer, the same way you don't envy my stubbornness,” I say, taking hold of the most sheer crevices as I inch along the gradually lengthening trail.

“Is your cock bored of your right hand or of the deadening cunny drought?” your mocking question stills my movements and for a moment I regret ever giving you the gratification of an answer – my jaws sealed shut and my breath coming in expressionless grunts, you chuckle somewhat to yourself, “I thought so.”

Your arrogant entitlement will always serve as a barrier between us, Sorcerer.


	9. Hope's Wellspring is Good for Drownings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Walter Padick/Sorcerer's POV:
> 
> Walter remembers his virginity being taken.

I remember my first fuck.

She was younger than me by at least a couple thousands of years, I say 'she' being that she preferred to be called alike so – she wasn't quite a woman, neither was she quite a man – she was a woman with a pair of balls as small as her tits, where a fragrant vagina usually sat open and grimacing it's toothless gums was instead a vacant urethra hole where her nerves pulsed red and swollen against her alabaster skin...her full scrotum swung it's hairless rhythm between the 'erogenous' mound of flesh and the gaping equally red swell of her stretched asshole.

She was number 3773 or 'ELLE', the coincidence still amuses me.

A product of alchemy and science, she was born from neither a natural mother nor from the conventional means of cloning.

ELLE was an abomination – a brazen backhand to God, and I hated her for I wasn't halfway as perverse.

Her flesh housed a heart made from shavings of an unholy relic, every limb held the unholy language and symbols of my blood-sire Lucifer – she was absolute and perfectly complete in my eyes, and so she was able to act as a medium or an inhabitable vessel for demons and other spirits.

My antediluvian eyes beheld her during Gomorrah's golden age of depravity: her long black hair hissed with her steps, a pair of iron rings drilled into her jawbones bespoke her profession as a courtesan, a prostitute, a freak whom fed primarily on bodily fluids and waste – and yet, not a single bit of shame ever reached her glowing red eyes, they seemed to gather _fulfillment_ from providing pleasure.

All the more, I envied her unrepentant existence, she lived only to enact her employer's will and strove for monotony’s approving moans – I'd have her or I should kill her – she cared nothing at all of courtship and I took little notice of impressing her with my vaults of gold.

Seven feet tall with tiny hands and small feet, a long v-shaped facial structure and long-limbed, she resembled a white goat without horns, and yet all the more humanlike – her kind was the most sought-after commodity in Gomorrah – I won her in a duel.

ELLE knelt in an awkward position as I came into her chambers: her torso bowed so that her jaws were held wide and her throat straight and upright for the perfect suckling height, her hands held unto the opposite sides of her ass cheeks, her inner sanctum of sacrilege and sin spread wide and ripe for a poking in the hind end, her hair braided atop her head in a sturdy knot so as to serve as another anchor for her master's will.

I admired her aptitude and so I produced a barbed whip, every slash produced a black gash which instantly healed, her open throat sang various notes of gratification and sensuality as if I'd awakened a demon whore's insatiable Ka within her...

She squealed, she moaned, she mewled, she bucked and cried, “More, more please, Master! More! More! _More!_ ”

I swung the whip harder and harder, faster and faster, until it seemed, the air stilled, all became quiet, the atmosphere charged with an unholy aura and I smelled the singe of flesh and volcanic stone – her bones cracked, her skin and muscles melted from her ash gray bones, she held me in an embrace of blood and disconnected viscous, the smell circled my skull, her blood ran uninterrupted over my bare skin, her nerves licked every pore and cavity, finding my untried flesh, I squirmed, kicking and swinging my arms – she only rumbled out a laugh that shook my body all over – and I opened, her searching nerves wriggled their way in like a million tiny maggots searching for the rotten core that is my Ka.

There was no pleasure, only an absence of sensation – numbness worse than a solid ice bath paled in comparison, the one thing which kept me above the madness and the common thrall was taken from me in less than a second, she did not savor my virginity as a man should – had I met you several eons earlier, Roland, I’d have given it to you.

She fucked me with the same disconnected accord as a female provided with a strap-on, I endured in kind with the same disconnected obedience a prostitute suffers at the exact moment of surrender where all hope is gone and an abyss of desolation is stretched outward...

How I envied her ability.

Hours became days, and days melted into months – so suddenly, I found myself within a sleeping beast's grasp, it's many arms stroking my limbs and it's thousands of tongues wrapped around my torso and hips in a lazy show of pleasure while a massive tangle of bodies moved in a wave of ecstasy all around beneath the beast.

ELLE disappeared, I absorbed her and dissolved her unholy perfection into oblivion.

I can only watch you from afar, your eyes closed in the rare moments of sleep and how your brow crinkles from the nightmare you experience – when I’m not leading you, I remember the days before the great upheaval.

None are as pure in faith or have the strength of a thousand Ka than the one you possess, is it so wrong to yearn for something that I can maybe never have?

Am I crazy, insane, helpless to feel my heart and body pull toward you, Roland?

Do you want to kill me as badly as I ache to have you inside?

No amount of goading or coercion would soften you up, I can see that now, I'd been going about this all the wrong way.

I'll wait right here, atop the sandstone fault – so hurry up and find me...please...?

My body is empty without you, my mind is disintegrating the longer I go without speaking to you – my magics grow stronger, my Ka pulses with a palpable aura in hot waves... _can't you feel that I need you_?

A few more days without my company, and maybe, you won't be too generous firing the gun at me – I can bear it, it's only been nearly a month or three of celibacy...I can manage a few more days.

There's not enough air to breathe...too many colors in this night...not cool enough to feel soothed...the quiet is far too loud not to notice...I feel my own loneliness so acutely that my bones feel disjointed and my Ka fragmented into nothingness...I'm so lonely I could die and feel comforted by joining the infinite dead...

...but I want you, Roland, just a taste, just a small memory that I can touch for even just a second...

For the first time in eons, I’m so exhausted – I'll maybe close my eyes, take a small nap, listen to your breathing from across the hundreds of miles between us – I'll be right here.

A broken mind masks a broken heart, Roland, or does the broken heart overcome the broken mind?


End file.
